


The Truth of a Liar's Love

by 1V1



Series: Kingsbane [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe Ending, Bad Ending, End of the World, F/M, Lost Love, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-06 12:15:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14056797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1V1/pseuds/1V1
Summary: The second alternate ending for the story 'Royal'.The result of Reader returning to earth, and Loki's conquest of the nine realms.





	The Truth of a Liar's Love

“Do you really think I’m going to stop you?” He asks, black tea steaming from the porcelain teacup in his hand.  
The man he’s taking to blinks once, twice, and then nods with the smallest incline of his head. He isn’t drinking the tea, it sits on the small wooden table to his right. His voice is even and betrays none of the rage and hate that he knows lurks under the flawless alabaster skin. The tone betrays nothing of the loathing and need for vengeance for the crimes committed to him.  
To the one person in perhaps all of the universe he loves and loves him unconditionally in return.  
“I would be a fool to think you would not try to stop me in my endeavors, much less one of such a grand scale and on a matter I am most-“ the man who does not drink his drugged tea smiles and the sorcerer supreme quells the fear coiling in his gut at the sight of it, “-passionate about.”  
Stephen Strange, Doctor, Sorcerer Supreme, keeper of the Infinity Stone of Time, Bane of Dormamu, looks across from him at the one person he would have never have in million years thought he would find himself allied with, much less feeling empathy for.

Loki, Allfather of the Nine realms, King of Asgard, King of Jotunheim, World Conqueror, Savior of Sakaar, Wielder of the Space, Reality, and Soul Gems, the lattermost he personally managed to steal from the Titan Thanos himself. But of all his titles, Loki is here calling himself one thing only-

Husband. To a human woman- A woman who lives in a tiny two bedroom apartment in the middle of Arizona; A woman who works at a drug store barely makes above the minimum wage to afford her home and keep her two sons happy and healthy. A woman who lives on food stamps and welfare because she has nothing- who lives in abject poverty and struggles to make ends meet and often resorts to begging from co-workers.  
A woman who has many names herself, but to Loki, the man who had conquered entire worlds, she is (y/n), the woman he loves and will stop at nothing to win back from those that stole her from him.  
Strange has many regrets, and she is the one he regrets the most.

When she’d come to earth, she had never planned for it to be a return. She’d come not as a citizen, But she’d rather come as a queen. Dressed in gold and green, a horned crown on her head, she’d been escorted by the Einherjar, two dozen of them, and had planned the visit for months in advance. She was the infamous human queen, bride of Loki of Asgard, the would be conqueror of Earth, brother of the Almighty Thor, (Odinson), and enemy of the free peoples of Earth.  
Yet his queen had come, smiling with her twin sons by her side and a hope for peace in her heart.

A hope that died when not even less than four hours after arriving from the Bifrost, she was imprisoned by the UN, her sons taken from her, her guards killed in a bloody battle, and the Bifrost prevented from opening due to technology invented by Stark and Foster. Technology made possible by the very fragment of the Bifrost she had once sent to earth with perhaps her only friend and champion, Bruce Banner. She had been beside herself, distraught when he’d met her. It was not fear for herself but for her children, her sons, not even five years old yet, fear for earth, knowing her husband’s wrath. Fear for her guards, for Banner, for Thor, (Odinson). Yet no fear for herself. Strange had thought it odd at first, but later, he’d realized perhaps what Banner had known and tried to tell him-  
She had survived madness and monsters disguised as men, she’d suffered through unimaginable mental tortures and suffering, yet her heart was still her own. She loved, she cared, and she would never give up in the face of adversity. She was, without a doubt, a woman of unwavering strength. A woman with all the makings of a queen.  
A woman who could make a man like Loki find a peace and happiness no others could give him. She was his heart, and like fools, they had stolen her from him.

 

Strange had regrets. But none so great as going up to her, looking into her eyes a she begged him to send her and her sons back to Loki, saying, promising, that she would never return, that she would not allow him his vengeance- he would never forget the scream she made as he sealed away her memories, as he made her forget everything about Sakaar, about Asgard. About Loki. He regrets, because in doing so, he felt her soul, so good, so pure and full of love-shattering.  
She loved Loki, and Strange had taken from her the memories of the one she loved for no reason but fear.

After the act, (the crime, the atrocity, the greatest evil he had ever done), he’d looked at her, face so blankly innocent, voice so full of wonder and confusion to magic, the very thing that her husband controlled with a fineness unrivaled, and he’d wanted to vomit.  
All the light in her eyes, the life, the kindness, the love he’d seen just moments prior for a hope that he might offer salvation was gone.  
Dull, grey eyes, void of anything that once might belie the woman who’s very soul he’d torn apart.

Strange looked at Loki, so disarmingly calm, so coiled in his rage and hate that Strange knew his time had come to answer for his part in the crime of Earth- the crime against an innocent queen and two guiltless princes.  
“I protect Earth from outside threats.” Strange finally answered, finishing his cup of tea. He didn’t refill it, there was no need. They’d both leave soon anyway.  
“I am of Asgard, that would seem to fall under the realm of ‘outside’ despite your planet’s status as being under Asgard’s portection.”  
“This was a threat we created.” The greatest shame, the greatest mistake. To think they could keep her and suffer no consequence. Loki had already disabled the shields Stark and Foster had created. Soon, Loki’s forces would come, and none would be ready.  
“So, would you say that this war is one you created and thus, have no right to fight in?” Loki’s eyes narrow, and Strange knows he’s on thin ice. His powers are great, the geas he’s crafted from the time stone is helpful, but Loki’s powers are more than anything he’s faced before. Once, Loki was a master sorcerer, a frost giant trained in the art of war, in Asgardian magic and battle, a god only in name. Now? Now he has the right to call himself a God of Chaos, and Strange wouldn’t question it. 

The clock that sits on a wall behind Loki ticks away as the seconds pass.  
“No.” He admits it, though he knows he is damning himself, damning hundreds, if not thousands or millions to their deaths in the war that will come.  
“I helped start this. I knew it was wrong, I knew it was a mistake, but I still did it, I still.” He holds out his scarred hands, guilt finally washing out of him, laid bare at Loki’s feet. Yet the King-Conqueror doesn’t move.  
“Her mind- I did it to her. I thought it would help, that she might go back to her life, adapt. But I was wrong. So wrong- her soul, she- she was your’s.” Strange feels it, the prying of his mind, Loki reaching in, seeking, hunting, and Strange does not resist.  
“She was always your’s.”

Loki nods and stands up, Gungnir in hand and horned crown giving him all the gravitas of his position.  
“Your spell is strong.” He says, and Strange looks at him, wondering what he has done, what he has allowed to happen in a misguided belief that a trickster couldn’t have found a woman who would love him, tricks and chaos and all. Strange, who thought Loki had lied when he said he loved the woman with hope in her eyes and love of him in her heart.  
Strange, who thought that her love was his lie.  
“But I am stronger.”  
Loki leaves as he arrived, a portal crafted by raw magic and the bending of space itself, his control over the space gem absolute now. Strange knows that he won’t have long, that the Avengers will have to make a choice, to face the monster they created. To fight in the war they started by ignoring the truth in favor of a lie they’d told themselves while Banner had given them the truth of the Liar all along.

Strange looks at the clock, ticking away as second pass.  
He doesn’t have long, and soon, he will have to face the consequences. He made his choice long before Loki arrived, long before the war that he knew would come was on his doorstep.  
Forgiveness is not given or won. Forgiveness is earned.

He opens a portal with his sling ring to a tiny town in Arizona, where a queen who doesn’t know she’s a queen sleeps in a bed with her sons; across the way from her only friend who has been hiding from S.H.E.I.L.D. and the world in plain sight, silently protecting her. As he steps into the dusty city, cold night air leaving puff of steam in front of his face, he looks up at the golden light pouring from the room that the Hulk has called home. A being who watches from behind Banner’s eyes and hurts from the sight of the friend who was forced to forget him. 

Banner answers his door, and his smile is melancholy.  
“So, it’s finally time then?” He asks, taking a final parting glance to the shabby place he’s lived in since the day he arrived with a new face, a new name.  
“Are you planning to fight him?” Strange knows the answer already. But he still asks. He asks because he’s afraid what will happen after. Everything will change when it’s all said and done. This is the Chaos they created, the one they brought to their doorstep when once, they could have had peace.

“I have been fighting for one person for the last seven years Strange. No one else.” Green crosses under his skin and Strange nods. He knows, he understands.  
“Take her away- far, far away. He’ll find her when the dust has settled.” Strange can feel it in his bones, the rippling of space in the distance.  
“No.” The refusal is sudden and he doesn’t understand. “We’ll wait. I know he’ll come and she’ll need to be in a safe place.”  
“Banner- they know she’s here. As soon as Loki arrives.”  
“He’ll come for her.” Banner shrugs, as if this is not the God of Chaos they talk of, but a loyal hound.  
“Banner-“  
“You all think he’d risk her, risk them. I know what I saw back then, I know-“ He shakes his head and steps back, closing the door slowly in Strange’s face.  
“He begged me to protect her Strange.” A glint of something in the doctor’s eyes, a tiny glimmer of mischief. “And the Hulk protects his friends.” The door shuts, and Strange is left alone in the hallway of a rundown apartment building.

He feels the tear in space, the portal opening.  
War has arrived.

He leaves, ready to face the war he helped create.

Three doors away, in a bedroom with peeling paint and a few toys scattered on the floor, a God-King looks to the woman he loves and her sons.

She wakes in the morning, tears running down her face, as she remembers her lover’s name.

**Author's Note:**

> Not the actual ending, just a alternate one.
> 
> If you like my work, please consider supporting me and my work via Ko-fi or Patreon under StolenVampires.


End file.
